Keeping up with the current chalkboard trend, and feeling just a tiny bit 'bah humbug' about Christmas being so close again, I started with Chalkboard Snowflake/Chevron and made a bottle topper. We have a male friend who likes a good red wine and he sometimes feels a little grumpy about Christmas too so I made my tag to suit him perfectly :)

Tracy has a fantastic tutorial for bottle toppers, including measurements here.

For this one I used the Snowflake side of the paper on the front, and the Chevron side on the reverse. My embellishments are in keeping with the grumpy theme - a prickly die cut pine border, a sad, emo snowman stamp and an old Brrr... rub-on for the front, and on the back some more pieces of prickly pine, and a die cut frame attached with two black brads. The sentiments - brief and to the point - are from Tim Holtz'

Idea-Ology Chit Chat Stickers. You can find just about every word you will ever need in both white and Kraft right here in these stickers. I love them!!. The edges of the papers and the tiny words are swiped with Black Soot Distress Ink. Here's how they look on the bottle. (sorry for the dodgy photo sizes!)

Having made a start, I brightened up a bit as I went along.....

Using Green Snowflake/Chevron I made this 3D Step Ladder card (mine is 6''x10'' and I watched this tutorial from Andrea Walford on YouTube.) The Snowflake side of the pp decorates the mountain fold sides and the Chevron side is on the valley sides behind. The papers have all had their edges inked with Pine Needles Distress Ink.

The only embellishments used here are white cardstock diecuts - scalloped at the bottom using a punch and sparkled at the top using Picket Fence Distress Stickles. This card is my family's favourite, very dramatic and graphic - Tango liked it too!

Again, the decoration on this one is very simple, the Snowflake side of the paper and the Chevron side complimenting each other in different sections of the card. On the front is a die cut snowflake - again just white cardstock - and my only embellishment is a Large Antique Silver Christmas Tree. I attached it using a plain red brad and decorated it with Red Rhinestones

Hiding the brad at the back and providing writing space at the same time is another red diamond and a white die cut shape, and this time I also made a matching envelope.

Then I coloured one of my stamped soldiers and popped him up on dimensional tape directly over the original stamp. This way you can still see all the finer detail in the stamp around the main image. I did the same with the Toy Soldier label. The second stamp was used for just the feather in his hat, the yellow crossed braces and the boots. Although you can't really tell from the photo, they are popped up on more dimensionals to stand out further from the tag.

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This angel, carrying a tambourine and clad in finely crafted robes, helps us to channel our life force into creative acts which bring music, colour and form into our existence. It blesses us to be abundantly creative in everything we do.